Indeed, South Africa now faces growing violence in its cities, streets, and countryside, with a spiraling murder rate. Unemployment is at 25%, and economic inequality remains a legacy of the past and the greatest of challenges for the nation. At the same time, economic growth has been lifting the ranks of the black middle class. South Africa is Africa’s leading economy, and will be the first African nation to host the World Cup soccer championship this summer. And there are numerous examples where alternative development models are also contributing to build a better future for all South Africans.

While on a recent business trip to Cape Town the inevitable discussion of the South African apartheid struggle came up in a conversation I was having with my Afrikaans agent there. How is it, I asked him, that during the years of struggle and the final days of the overturn of apartheid that the country did not spin out of control into an unstoppable civil war that could perhaps still be ongoing today?

“Very simple, ” he replied. “If it hadn’t been for the leadership of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, we would have likely had such a terrible civil war.”

The gentleman I am speaking with is Afrikaans and at 72 was a member of the old guard, yet he has never left the country and in fact is quite proud of the fact that South Africa has such a story of triumph to tell, for the nonviolent space that was created has allowed the country to move forward in untold ways compared to the scars and destructive forces that civil war would have unleashed.

So the legacy of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, as the sons of Gandhi’s own movement in the very country that first threw the young Indian off the railcar and into the collective consciousness forever, remains a living testament to the power of nonviolence to influence positive social change through inspired and enlightened leadership. This is the leadership we are all called to provide in our own way, beginning with ourselves.

South Africa is a long way from reaching the Promised Land, but the seeds of change there have been deeply planted and remain a great source for optimism. Let’s keep their hope alive.

Angelo Capozzi

– Richard Johnson

My youth were usually pretty wild and would spend most of their energy talking over me, fighting, and making each other cry, but this night was different and changed the group dynamics for the rest of our time together.

I had them all bring in something small that they believed represented who they were in some way. I laid a mandala, an object that none of my youth had ever heard of before, on top of a bright piece of yellow cloth on the floor and began to explain that a mandala was a representation of the universe. All of the lines made a beautiful picture and led back to the center connecting every point to every other. I explained how there was no beginning and no end, and showed them pictures of sand mandalas made by Buddhist monks and explained how mandalas were thought to first be used in for meditation and prayer by the Hindus, but how all of the major religions have adopted them into religious practices and art work. I also explained how psychologists have often used mandalas with patients in order to help them relax and focus.

After my spiel, which they were unusually quiet for, I explained the activity. Each of them were to tell the group about the object that they brought and how it represented who they were. Then they were to place their object onto the mandala, and the next person was to go. It was magic. I explained the activity and it just started! I didn’t have to force anyone to go first, and it just kept going one person after the other. Some decided to even go twice. I just sat there and watched in amazement and they actually had to break me from my trance and remind me that I also had to go.

And then just as easily as the activity began, the conversation started. “Look at the Mandela and tell me what you see,” I said.

“We all are different, but we all are connected because we fit into the universe.”

“I learned that if no matter how far away I placed my object. I really couldn’t get away from other people. I was on a line that linked me to someone else.”

“We are more different than we thought. That’s cool.”

“Wow, when something bad happens to one of us, it affects everyone else. Look, we can’t stop being connected.”

That night, I saw a personal transformation take place in each one of them and in myself.

– Brandi Remington

Annie and I had been capsized near the churning propellers of the Nitro… so we had our brush with death far from the shores of Vietnam. Margaret Mead is said to have mentioned our action in a radio broadcast I never was able to hear. By the time the Nitro got to the Philippines, enough officers had applied for Conscientious Objector status that the Nitro could not be sent into the war zone until that situation could be resolved. Maybe we did not stop the war that day, but we slowed it.

Now my doctor today is a Physician Assistant born in Cambodia, who moved to Washington at age 8 months. I serve as secretary for the Yakima County NAACP and stories… we have a bunch!

The best news is that we can do something now to make the world even better than we now find it.

I started getting involved in women’s rights issues and specifically sexual assault after reading about a 14-year-old girl, Abeer, who was raped and murdered by U.S. soldiers in Iraq. If that weren’t enough, her entire family was murdered with her, and the house was burnt down to hide the evidence. After reading about her story, crying, and wanting to hate, I was able to redirect my anguish into activism by connecting this issue to the larger anti-war struggle I was deeply involved in at the time.

Despite my background as an activist, it was only recently that I began to advocate as a counselor. I wrote the following (excerpted) message to my fellow volunteers at RAINN:

I know this is beyond what we’re expected to do, and it’s not a good idea in certain cases, but I often find myself doing this not necessarily because I think I know all the answers but because often visitors come looking for at least a starting point that will take them in a new direction. Sometimes it’s not enough to send them elsewhere (to counseling, another hotline, etc.) when what they need is someone to thoughtfully and compassionately listen and guide them to a better understanding of both the nature of their problems and how to solve them. Call me an idealist, but I believe that everyone is capable of overcoming their misfortune and that they usually know what they need to do in order to recover but lack the knowledge or the courage necessary to take the next step. Sometimes I devote a significant amount of time in the session to boosting their confidence and pulling them out of the victim role.

I have found that once visitors allow themselves to slide into the victim role, the whole world becomes the perpetrator, and they are not equipped to take on the entire world. What’s worse is they become the victim of their own negative energy. They tell themselves that they deserve what happened or that even if they did stand up or say something, nothing would ever change or it would only make matters worse (they often say this when it doesn’t appear that things could get much worse). I believe that this mindset is more dangerous to their lives than the assaults themselves.

The question I have is, “what more can we do to not just assist these people in their recovery from past assaults but to empower them to ward off any potential future attackers as well as to empower them to ward off the negative thoughts and feelings that give rise to despair and helplessness?”

I’m asking because I clearly do not have the solution. However, my attempts at aiding women in this way have been very successful so far, ending mostly with words of gratitude and concrete future steps toward recovery.

I should point out that my thinking on the subject of empowerment falls within the Gandhian framework: I oppose violence and strive to discover win-win solutions, often through reconciliation, rather than outcomes that would benefit one party at the expense of another. If there is one fundamental concept I would like to impart on others (not just RAINN visitors, but EVERYONE), it’s that interpersonal relationships do not function solely through power and control.

A week later, inspired by a counseling session occurring on Gandhi’s birthday, I wrote this follow-up:

Ok, I’m going to go ahead and be more specific because a particular visitor the other night is the perfect example of what I was trying to get at before.

It was a middle-age woman who came asking what to do about an old boyfriend who’s back in her life all of a sudden, and hurting her very badly. She didn’t want to call the police because she has kids and doesn’t want to involve them in any legal entanglements. She was also hoping to have a more peaceful resolution and just get the man to stop. She tried talking to him face-to-face, but that only led to another attack.

I could already sense that she was brave and resourceful, so I told her that she did have an option that could potentially, at the very least, not lead to an even worse/more violent outcome and possibly dramatically improve the situation. The option was to use nonviolent resistance.

I have only brought this up as a solution to a few other women in the past, and they were slow to take to it…if they did at all…but she seemed to believe it would work. I told her simply to look the man in the eyes the next time she sensed he would attack her, show no fear, and say something to the effect of “I’m a human being so please treat me like one” or “would you treat your mother/wife/sister” this way?” I assured her that even the cruelest man would respect boldness and courage on the part of his potential victim and that by the mere act of displaying boldness and courage, she would cease to be a victim.

This response may sound unusual, but it’s a tried and tested technique that’s designed to appeal to the potential perpetrator’s sense of decency. While the potential victim may be physically weaker, she has a key advantage in that her position is the moral one. By standing up to the madness, she is also allowing the potential perpetrator to see the evil of his actions, and she is simultaneously taking him out of the perpetrator role by assuming that he really does NOT want to hurt her if given the chance to see and reconsider his initial course of action. Other responses, such as begging for mercy, would only reinforce the victim/perpetrator dichotomy because it would cede power to the potential perpetrator with no attempt at accountability.

In this particular case, the visitor said she had never even thought of trying something like I suggested before and that her usual response was to submit and hope she survived. My assumption is that this is what many women do in her situation. I would like to change that as the default response.

– Matt Johnson, Washington, D.C.

I went to pick her up at Union Square. The place was packed but isolated. Packed because it was “Christmas/New Year’s time” around stores; isolated because very few people make eye contact let along connecting in a wholesome talk with a person “you don’t know”. As I silently blessed all these people, I sensed how my mom (whose English is in the early stages) started to losing up the tension of being in a foreign culture, shopping for hours, where you cannot verbally communicate well. That’s what you get in a material based society: isolation.

We walked about 15 blocks to wait for the bus that was taking us to Sami Sunchild’s hotel in Haight-Ashbury. I knew that the last 6 blocks were very tough, since poverty (physical and spiritual) shows in so many ways, even in the so called “1st world”. Since my mom was very tired both physically and emotionally, the walk didn’t work pretty well. Every person sleeping in the street, every sex worker, every person who thinks objects can buy happiness, contributed to her visible misery. It is incredible how in the middle of so many people we fail to nourish each other. She needed to have an empathetic conversation due to the cultural shock, but it was Monday.

I only kept smiling (with eyes, mouth, body and spirit) and thanking her for bringing me to this incredible Planet, and for making this trip to visit me.

As we were waiting for the bus, if it wasn’t clear enough, the gross reality of poverty and suffering manifested “on-your-face”.

The lady and the young man:

Perhaps we waited close to 15 minutes in that bus stop. From the porn theater in Market St in front of us to teenagers smoking, from people cursing the delay of the bus to an angry brother trying to sell a token. My mom was sitting, silently in shock with some sort of a shield trying to hold on her single shopping bag and purse. I was standing in the cold evening trying to radiate warm love.

Then a lady, who could have been as old as my mom (late 50s early 60s), tried to take the trolley from a nearby stop. Wobbling, she ran towards the door, barely stood up in front of the door, but the driver was not taking her. As the trolley left, she pulled back to the sidewalk and made an obscene sign to the driver. She stayed in that position for a couple of minutes.

She was a bit overweight, her cloths were dirty and one could infer she was drunk by the way she was walking.

I sent my blessings to this human being in profound misery, hoping that she could understand my silent love.

Then, she started walking towards us. When she was close enough (about 5 meters) she looked at me and yelled:

“How the f*** could you smile when someone is dying, asshole?”

I kept smiling but now with my most profound compassionate look. She kept walking towards us and during one of her wobbles, I smoothly looked at my mom (who missed the scene and was still nervously sitting in the second sit of the bus stop) and I was very happy to see that her non-reaction was a sign that she didn’t understand (or completely understand) what the other lady in pain was saying. After all, having a broken English is not that bad! Mirror neurons are mirror neurons ;-)

The lady approached me and rudely asked me for money, I opened my hands mimicking empty hands and empty pockets at the same time as I was smiling respectfully at her, but with shining eyes all the time. She turn around and proceed to have a seat.

“Love and respect, love and respect” came to my mind/heart as she sat on the 1st seat by my mom. The lady took out a little transparent glass bottle from her pocket. She drank the transparent liquid and threw the bottle on the ground. Unfortunately it wasn’t water, as I smelled later that alcohol coming from her breath.

I was waiting to see if she was asking my mom for some money, or to be ready for any interaction they might have since they were almost rubbing elbows, but that interaction never happened. My compassion to this woman increased even more when I could noticed the dry blood on one of her temples, the fresh scars in her face and more dry blood below one of her nostrils. Her hands had some minor scratches too. All signs of a very hard day… or maybe week or perhaps hard months living in the streets!

Then the lady got into a hibernation mode as if the warmth of my mother was doing something to her.

The bus we were waiting for arrived in the inner lane of Market St, so we had to walk fast to jump into the bus since we were on the sidewalk. Other passengers got on the bus. My mom went first and handed me a $5 dollar bill to pay the $4 fee of the two of us. Then the wobbling lady showed up at the door. I mimicked to the driver that the $1 dollar change was for her. He gently smiled and he nodded. I held her hand for a brief instant to help her get onto the bus steps. Then I showed her that there was an empty seat for her in the semi-packed bus.

I sat by my mom. We were 5 seats from the lady. After 2 stops she fell asleep. The bus got really packed and then, after another couple of stops or so, more cursing and yelling.

I looked at our lady, but she was still sleeping. This time it was a Latin kid (mid twenties who got in the bus after us) insulting and yelling at our lady, as he was in a contiguous seat (paraphrasing him without the cursing):

“You pig! You really need to take a shower! Are you listening to me? I’m going to vomit, Jesus Christ! How can you live like this, pig? Aren’t you disgusted of your nasty smell? Get off the bus! I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t!”

That’s when I got to stand up again and walked to stand up in front of this young man and our lady. As I approached the scene looking at them with profound love, the yelling stopped. The young man could not look at me in the eye. As I was holding the upper bar of the bus in front of them, our lady, opened her eyes, looked up, made fuzzy eye contact with me and implored for some love: “do you have a transfer?” she said. I grabbed the two transfer tickets from my pocket and put them in her hand. The slight touch of our hands was the signal for her: “it’s all good mother, now you can keep sleeping, I’ll take care of the rest”. As if it were verbal communication, she smiled at me and closed her eyes again.

Then the young man said, as if he was looking for the acknowledgment of the people around him: “I respect you, I respect you but not her man! She stinks man! Respect to you brother, respect to you.” Then he opened two of the windows above her seat and stood up by the door exit with a young couple that was following the drama.

The people nearby the scene suddenly had a glow in their eyes. “Hatred dissolves in the presence of love” I said with eyes and smiles, the language of the heart. The young man said: “I like Gandhi man, I like Gandhi” (as I was wearing the famous Gandhi sweatshirt). I bowed with respect and palms together making loving eye contact with him (for the first time) and a big smile.

“Oh I see, you are deaf, you can’t speak and you do signs [as he was doing some sort of signs with his hands].” “I like you bro, more respect to you brother, more respect to you.”

He also started being friendly with the young couple as if he desperately needed some acceptance. The people around were smiling from ear to ear. As we all made eye contact, I bowed to them with palms together.

The young man decided to move to the back part of the bus. We smiled to each other and then I went back to sit by my mom who was still in subtler pain, but that’s another story… ;-)

Yes! Universal Love works! :-)

– anonymous :-)

‘When I heard you talk I thought it was pure bunk. Two months later I found myself in Rwanda, and had to arrest a child soldier who had just shot a man. There he was, holding the rifle. I reached for my sidearm. But then the thought popped into my head: “Maybe Nagler isn’t bunk.”  So I left my sidearm in the holster, made eye contact and slowly walked up to him. I gently turned away the rifle, feeling that the barrel was still hot, and took hold of him. I found someone who spoke Kirwanda to explain that he wasn’t going to be punished (he was crying by that time) and everything would be alright.’

The implication behind his words was, you saved my life — or his.

– Michael Nagler